The Palms this Year

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Philippians 2:5-11 and Matthew 21:1-11

Palm Sunday, and it is not as it usually is, as it should be. Normally we begin we by blessing fresh palm crosses, singing jubilant hosannas, reading the story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem on a donkey accompanied by his expectant and joyous followers. We start with joy, and then turn slowly toward telling the beginning of the harder stories of Holy Week. At saint ben’s we’ve always departed from the lectionary on this night, and instead of reading the full Passion story we continue the liturgy with reading the story of the last supper, and then after communion has been shared, we read the story of Gethsemane, ending at the moment of Jesus’ arrest. Before departing from the church building in silence, very often over the years we have brought the liturgy to an end by singing a song by Gord Johnson that begins,

Lord I abandoned
You in the garden
sold You for silver
left You forsaken
in Your hour of need

It is a song that invites a deep, searching, and personal engagement with the way of the Cross, but even at that it is sung with the glad hosannas still sounding in our ears, and the confidence that in a week we’d be singing bold alleluias.

It is so different this year. Lent has been so different this year. We began as always with our Ash Wednesday liturgy, which calls us to remember our mortality, our fragility, and our need for grace. For the first two Sundays in Lent everything seemed quite normal, but for the third Sunday we were required to refrain from exchanging the peace with a handshake or embrace, and the use of the common cup for communion was set aside. The very next day all public gatherings were suspended throughout the diocese, and since then we have been gathering in this way, with just a few of us here in the church and everyone else participating electronically.

And yes, Gord did have us singing hosanna tonight, but it was a considerably slower version than usual, with something of a melancholy air. Recalling that “hosanna” means “save us, please” in Hebrew, the melancholy is all the more apt. I wonder, too, if next Sunday’s alleluias won’t be sung more softly, with tones of “save us” implicitly embedded in them.

In an article published earlier this week in Time magazine  Bishop N.T. Wright offered some very poignant insights on all of this. Noting that “the coronavirus - induced limitations on life have arrived at the same time as Lent, the traditional season of doing without,” Bishop Wright comments how, “Doing without whisky, or chocolate, is child’s play compared with not seeing friends or grandchildren, or going to the pub, the library or church.”

There is a reason we normally try to meet in the flesh. There is a reason solitary confinement is such a severe punishment. And this Lent has no fixed Easter to look forward to. We can’t tick off the days. This is a stillness, not of rest, but of poised, anxious sorrow.

Not that the calendar won’t say that next Sunday is Easter, but the alleluias will be oh so different, the family dinners postponed, the urgency of maintaining distancing protocols heightened as we seek to slow the spread of this fearsome virus.

Maybe psalms of lament will need to be read and prayed this year over Eastertide. In his article Bishop Wright suggests that perhaps “what we need... is to recover the biblical tradition of lament.” “Lament,” he observes,

Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world.

[And] The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments.

Yes, and we saw it last week as the tears ran down Jesus’ face when he stood at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, and witnessed the sorrow of those sisters Mary and Martha. But Lord, is it enough that you are lamenting with us over all of the sorrow and fear of this present day? Lord Jesus, we heard from Paul’s epistle tonight that you have been given the name that is above every name, and at your name every knee should bend and ever tongue proclaim that you are Lord. What does that now mean?

Maybe if we recall what Paul and those early Christian believers were facing in Philippi we can get at least some sense of what he meant them to hear. Theirs was a world that held no little hostility to the new Christian movement. Located close to the Aegean Sea in what is now Greece, Philippi was very much a city of the Empire and part of a world soaked in the Greco-Roman myths. Power meant the iron hand of Rome, gods who were unpredictable and often merciless toward mere mortals, and privilege that came with birthright, class, and rank. And yet in Philippi Paul spoke of character and of love, calling his young community to cut against the grain of imperial thinking and practice. As Edward Pillar comments, 

The power of the Lord Jesus then is not power-over, but is rather love, compassion, mercy, and companionship alongside. The form taken by the Lord Jesus seems to be a deliberate indication that God’s desire is not for the fulfillment of God’s own divine self, so much as a desire for the blessing of humanity.

“God exalts Jesus,” Pillar comments, “precisely because in life—his taking on the form of a slave, desiring the very best for humanity, and loving to the fullest extent —Jesus truly reflected the nature and character of God.”

Love, compassion, mercy, and companionship alongside of us.

I believe that honestly felt and expressed lament finally must awaken us to those things too. We ask the question, “Why?” and hear no clear answer. We pick up the language of lament—how long O Lord, how long?—and then raise our heads again and look to see how we, as humans and Christian disciples, must be during these hard and anxious days. To not let anyone be forgotten, to not leave someone to weep alone—even if the companionship must be by phone or FaceTime—to not see only our own struggles but the shared burden we all are called to bear, to be grateful for those who continue to work in essential services and to tell them that.

Yes, Palm Sunday is different this year, as will be all of Holy Week and Easter Sunday and well beyond. These Lenten days will seem to roll on far, far too long, but that’s no reason to give up.

Love, compassion, mercy, companionship. Those are the palm branches we must raise and wave and carry this year.

The article cited in this sermon is N.T. Wright – “Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To,” Time, March 29, 2020.